Armory of Haison
The Armory of Haison (Armor I-Haison) or the Armory of Rafah or The Arsenal is a factory complex located in the city of Haison. The arsenal is owned by the Caliph with a significant share owned by the Jarnawid merchant family. Prior to the Voldranians it was one of the largest and fastest producing shipyards in New Voldrania and sealed the large-scale success of the centralized Hamalfite merchant-marine. Likewise the structure is considered the key to long-term success and survival in the shifting politics of the Wali-Emir of Haison. Construction Overview Arsenal construction began as a commission by Caliph Rashdun ibn-Mombadid to Rafah ibn-Jarnawid as a means to organize the ship building community located around Haison. Since then ship construction was a decentralized and informal pursuit by the Hamal-i Shea tribes. The disorganize of construction severely limited the abilities of the sailors who largely used the ships for near-shore fishing. However for a about a hundred years before the ascension of Mombadin as the unifying Caliph of the tribes the Hamal-i Shea had begun pushing further out to sea, predominately exploring the near-shore blue waters. Through this they were able to travel as far as the early kingdoms of Altenahnenwalde. Though this method relied on traversing the coastal brown waters. This however took a considerable long times and it was demanded by Rashdun that organization be put under way to compete with expanding merchants from Zaescaes. Plans were drawn up to construct a massive complex north-west of the growing city of Haison, occupying a plot of brine-land swamp. Beginning in the summer of Rashidun's seventh year it was finished ten years later. History The arsenal as it stands is a product of several centuries of reconstruction and revision to keep up with shifting shipbuilding design and theory demanded and drafted by the Hamalfite merchant and shipwright community. Workshops and warehouses being merged and enlarged to make way for larger ships and more complex design. The purpose of the arsenal was originally to accommodate for private fleets of merchant ships. Though as Hamalfite ambitions grew and their networks expanded it took on a purpose in building military-marine ships to patrol naval claims and secure trade routes from piracy. Expansion of private and crown interested put greater pressure on the arsenal to the point that simply building more workshops and hiring in more labourers and slaves did little to keep up with demand. As well the arsenal also served foreign commissions for arsenal-built ships given their low over all price. Until then the arsenal had an air of pride for building a new ship every several days, but over these growing factors the rate of construction began to suffer. Organization reforms were forced by Caliph Amir to keep up with demand. Amir demanded of the Wali-Emir to restructure the operations to achieve better efficiency with smaller real-estate and the Arsenal was restructured to accommodate for a methodology akin to that of an assembly line, with single stations taking up multiple workshops. Current workshops were reordered, reconstructed, and fitted to serve a linear design philosophy with the ship advancing along the line as the last model moved like-wise. Production as well shifted from traditional hull-first design to frame-first allowing for a skeletal ship to be pushed or floated ahead to be hulled and decked, either in a state of having started in the framing station or being hulled from the first board. Experimentation with standardized parts were put under way, and the expansion of warehouses began pushing the gear, weapons, and rope stations to the grand cellars beneath the factory. Standardized parts allowed for the rapid casting and construction of ship's cannons, ropes, and other necessities, as well as standardizing the ship specifics locking in just how large and small a ship class could be and what exactly could ever be commissioned. Through weapon design, part manufacture, and ultimate ship construction the arsenal reached a point where at between 15,000-18,000 workers they could produce a ship every other day. As the arsenal expanded so did its value as well as theoretical strength as not only a factory but a fortress. Several faces of the arsenal were expanded and thickened to server as a fortress to observe and guard the thin narrows between the Hamalfite coast and the Scavoran shore. The arrival of the Voldranians introduced new classes of ship design that the Caliphate in recent years as demanded space for their construction and the wider experimentation of sheathed or armored hulls as introduced by Akarv. Current The arsenal has always been a tightly secured location and unauthorized entry is punishable by death. Simply being caught without identification is a punishment treated harshly by the Caliph or the Jarnawid's personal justice. Trespassers may have their eyes burned out, tongue surgically removed, or drowned in the artificial bays. A permanent garrison is assigned to the Arsenal which watch over the entirety of its structure day in and out, rarely ever taking leave from it. And by law no structure in Haison may be build taller than the Arsenal's ramparts, with distance exceptions. The growth in the region of organized nation states and expanding foreign industry has called to question the compatibility of the arsenal. It's been proposed a new factory fortress should be built given low local real-state to build the existing arsenal out into. Category:New Voldrania Category:Haisonuuna Category:Structures